What is Talmud Tweets?

What is Talmud Tweets? A short, personal take on a page of Talmud - every day!

For several years now, I have been following the tradition of "Daf Yomi" - reading a set page of Talmud daily. With the start of a new 7 1/2 year cycle, I thought I would share a taste of what the Talmud offers, with a bit of personal commentary included. The idea is not to give a scholarly explanation. Rather, it is for those new to Talmud to give a little taste - a tweet, as it were - of the richness of this text and dialogue it contains. The Talmud is a window into a style of thinking as well as the world as it changed over the centuries of its compilation.

These are not literal "tweets" - I don't limit myself to 140 characters. Rather, these are intended to be short, quick takes - focusing in on one part of a much richer discussion. Hopefully, I will pique your interest. As Hillel says: "Go and study it!" (Shabbat 31a)

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Pesachim 9 – Pop Goes the Weasel!

In searching for leaven (chametz) the night before Passover there is a fair question about how far one searches, or how certain one has to be. For example, a very practical Mishnah states:

WE HAVE NO FEAR THAT A WEASEL MAY HAVE DRAGGED [LEAVEN] FROM ONE ROOM TO ANOTHER OR FROM ONE SPOT TO ANOTHER. FOR IF SO, [WE MUST ALSO FEAR] FROM COURT-YARD TO COURT-YARD AND FROM TOWN TO TOWN, [AND] THE MATTER IS ENDLESS.

Once a room is searched, it is searched and you don’t have to worry about a whole series of endless “what if’s.”

Or do you? Why keep things easy when we can jumble it up?

The reason is that we did not see it take [leaven]; but if we saw it take [it] we do fear, and it requires a [re-]search.

Ah, now we have a witness!

But maybe, even if we see it grab a piece of leaven we should assume that the weasel ate it? This leads into a long discussion about whether “a doubt can negate a certainty.” The conversation stems on, believe it or not, aborted and miscarried fetuses. We’ll save that for another time. Let’s go to a different thought experiment:

If there are nine packages of mazzah and one of leaven, and a mouse comes and steals [a package], and we do not know whether it took mazzah or leaven. . .

It turns out, using the analogy of meat purchased in a shop (but one forgets which shop) vs found on the street – the package the mouse steals from a fixed place (metaphorically similar to a butcher’s shop) has a 50% chance of being mazzah or leaven so we preserve doubt and re-search for leaven. However, if the stolen package was separated from the others (as is a piece of meat found on the street) we go with the majority. Since there are 9 packages of mazzah and only one of leaven, we assume the mouse is enjoying some nice unleavened bread and do not have to go searching for it.


We might worry if it has a stomach ache, though.

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